Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Apparently, this is my 1000th post. It's been about seven years since I started this blog.

Currently Playing

I'm currently playing The Old Republic the most, and have joined a small raiding guild. I still have subscriptions to WoW and The Secret World, but I haven't really played them in a while. WoW I will go back to in Pandaria, but I'm not really sure about joining a guild or raiding. I probably will end up joining a guild, but we'll see.

In the The Old Republic, I'm playing an Imperial Agent Sniper, and also leveling a Sith Inquisitor Sorceror on the side.

For The Secret World, I dunno. I went Illuminati because they had good rifle decks, but the Illuminati are starting to annoy me. Their Hollywood or Corporate-speak is rather grating. I wish I had rolled Templar.

Trends in MMOs

Of course, the big trend in MMOs over the last seven years has been the move to Free-2-Play.

However, I wonder if this is just part of a larger trend to ... reduce a player's commitment to the MMO, might be the best way of putting it. To make it easier to play and join the game, to drop in and out. To smooth away all inconveniences that might stop someone from playing, or cause them to quit. Going F2P, making the game easier, avoiding conflicts in loot and resource gathering.

I'm not sure how well this trend is working out though. To me, an MMO is kind of like the bar in Cheers. A place where you sign in, and you see the same faces in the community, and everybody knows your name. But lately, it seems like that feeling has been disappearing. That rather than a community, it is an anonymous crowd.

To go back to the Extended/Transient division, it feels like games are becoming more and more Transient. Which is good, I suppose, as Transient players are the large majority. And yet to me it feels like the Extended aspects are what gave the game weight, what made it worth subscribing to for months on end.

The other big trend, which is annoying me, is loading screens. Whatever happened to seamless continents?

Conclusions

I hope you've enjoyed the last thousand posts. Hopefully there will be a thousand more, and in less than seven years. (Though I really wouldn't bet on the "less than seven years" part.) I've enjoyed reading your comments and emails, and the blogs of other players.

I'm also thinking about starting another blog. This would be about real life stuff I find interesting, like programming, politics, books, etc. I've been thinking about this for a while now, but am procrastinating because I cannot think of a decent name for the new blog.

Posted by
Rohan

15 comments:

Congratulations, 1K posts is a huge achievement.I have a inkling that the consumers are changing style of what games they are interested in; its almost like the gamer's flavour has shifted to where its less about old school dnd players who use a game, to twitch gamers with short attention spans - yet deep immersion is written on the boxes. I dont know; ya'know.